Brandon Thatch was all mop-top hair and oversized white high-top shoes when he walked into a dojo for the first time. He was 4 years old, knee-high to a duck.

Thatch’s first coach was a man named Clarence, an underground legend in Colorado MMA circles. Clarence was a four-time Sabaki karate champion and a world kickboxing champ. A year later, he became Thatch’s adopted father.

And as Thatch grew up in mixed martial arts — he now stands 6-foot-2 with a mohawk on top — the sport came of age around him. When Thatch walks into the cage Saturday for the main event on a nationally televised fight card in Broomfield, he will look drastically different than that 4-year-old ball of energy.

Thatch — who will fight Benson Henderson in an Ultimate Fighting Championship welterweight bout at the FirstBank Center — has lived most of his life in MMA, smack in the middle of a fighting tradition that dates to the earliest days of the sport.

“I remember watching it and being afraid of it,” Thatch said of the early days of the UFC. “I was so young.”

Thatch, though, took an immediate liking to karate at Clarence Thatch’s gym.

“My mom brought me to his karate school to burn some energy out,” Thatch said. “I loved it. I really soaked it in.”

Thatch grew up among a tight MMA community just as the UFC was born in Colorado. Royce Gracie, the winner of UFC 1 and 2 in 1993-94 in Denver, trained with the Thatches and traded knowledge from their different disciplines.

“That was our introduction to the ground game and jiu jitsu,” Thatch said. “That was our eye-opening experience. Royce was 175 (pounds) soaking wet, and he was taking down heavyweights and choking them out.”

When Thatch was 16, on a whim, he entered a college tough-man competition between University of Colorado and Colorado State students. He won easily.

“I never really wanted him to fight,” Clarence said. “I wanted to teach him to fight so he wouldn’t have to. But you can’t pick and choose your kid’s destiny. You just have to let them find their own path and their own glory.”

Clarence’s dad, Irvin Thatch, was a professional boxer in St. Louis. Fighting as knowledge was passed down to Clarence, and now to Brandon.

“He’s adapted to everything,” Clarence said. “He’s become a true artist in that sense. What people don’t see is how hard he works on his craft.”

Thatch’s big break came when he was asked to train with longtime welterweight champ Georges St-Pierre in 2013. Thatch (11-1), while compiling eight knockout victories as a pro, including six in less than a minute, is making the sport his own. But he’ll take a fighting foundation learned from his dad as he looks to reach contender status.

covers baseball and the Rockies and all sorts of sports. He started working at The Denver Post while in high school before graduating from the University of Colorado. Reach him at ngroke@denverpost.com

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